[supplied_demand]

== But they don’t know how to reconcile “can save a few” with “can’t literally bring all poor people here without destroying our country.”==

It’s also possible that they hold a fundamentally different view than you and aren’t just naive idiots.

The phrase “destroying our country” is very charged and completely unsubstantiated in your comment. It’s almost like you are falling victim to the same type of emotional reaction you accuse others of holding.

[xp84]

Ok, "destroying" is ambiguous meaning.

But you don't think that admitting, say, half the populations of all the world's best-known failed countries like Somalia, Haiti, Syria, El Salvador, DRC, etc. would be bad for a Western country? A combination of lack of education, different cultural expectations, normalized crime and corruption, etc. means that the citizens from there would be bringing all of their problems with them. A randomly-selected person from those countries is a poor fit to be productive within our alien societal framework (doesn't speak the language, doesn't understand how Westerners conduct business, doesn't have cultural context in so many things). However the problem is, compared to a random person born into a Western society, such a newcomer is well-suited to get ahead by subverting the Western societal framework, such as by taking advantage of our lax approach to property crimes, or as I pointed out in this thread or another, exploiting Western guilt to land years-long rent-free hotel stays.

[supplied_demand]

==But you don't think that admitting, say, half the populations of all the world's best-known failed countries like Somalia, Haiti, Syria, El Salvador, DRC, etc.==

This has never happened, is not happening now, and has not been proposed by any current political party. Open borders is a falsehood that has never existed in our lifetimes and nobody is proposing today. If we are going to discuss the topic, let's stick with reality.

At the same time, my ancestors who immigrated from southern Italy didn't speak English, were very uneducated, weren't considered "white", didn't have the same cultural expectations, and brought all their problems with them. All of this happened during the golden age of American progress and growth (the exact era we are trying to "make again"). I find that interesting.

==such a newcomer is well-suited to get ahead by subverting the Western societal framework, such as by taking advantage of our lax approach to property crimes==

And yet, study after study shows us that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than American-born citizens [0] [1] [2] [3]. Let's move past the fake hypotheticals and discuss the known facts.

[0] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w31440/w314...

[1] https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2020-10/working-pa...

[2] https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/05/13/is-there-a-con...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/30/upshot/crime-...

[xp84]

> This has never happened, is not happening now, and has not been proposed by any current political party. Open borders is a falsehood

In the UK, the governments of both parties allow anyone who comes on a boat to remain, and they put them up in hotels until their claims of asylum are adjudicated, which takes years. How is that not open borders? Anyone with access to a dinghy can show up without any ID and not only be allowed to walk free, but to get 100% taxpayer-funded housing, when a ton of their citizens can't afford proper housing.

How is that not open borders? That's a no-questions-asked policy. And while it's "temporary" (A) they're on the honor system to show up to court in several years and (B) the citizens impacted by the crime, the draining of public funds, and the downward pressure on wages don't care, even if each migrant did peacefully walk right out 4 years later upon losing an asylum case. Although there are a ton of ways to guarantee a win, such as having a child during your stay, who would be a UK citizen. The ECHR says you have to let them stay, even if they've also shown themselves to be a criminal. https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/1j3zu29/depo...

In America, meanwhile, the orthodox Left viewpoint is that "no one is illegal" and that it's fascist to arrest and deport people for overstaying visas or working in the US without legal status. Does the American Left think we should have the rules saying "the border is not open," yet no enforcement? Because that's how it sounds if you're not willing to actually deport anyone. Personally, I supported DACA (and voted for Obama twice) but I think it's insane to just do what we're doing, which like the UK, is to accept "asylum seekers," releasing them into the US and asking them to promise to show up for their hearings in a few years. Of course, we don't give them hotels, but arguably the impact of a ton of homeless "asylum seekers" every year isn't pretty either. I know Trump has made some changes to the US policies above, but the Left clearly doesn't want to tighten border control, and I'm not making up some strawman here.

> immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than American-born citizens

Even if that's true (I won't be foolish enough to pretend I know better so let's assume they are) we'd be better off with 0 immigrants and 0 crimes than 10,000,000 immigrants and "slightly fewer crimes than 10,000,000 extra native-born citizens would have committed." And the second-order effects of importing as many impoverished people as we can to compete for available housing and jobs is still bad news for the least-wealthy of those already here, which can lead to more crime in that group of people.

Unselective immigration and zero enforcement policies are a major thumb in the eye of poor and working class Americans, but the issue has basically zero negative impact on the elites -- the highly-educated and wealthy people who make up most of the present-day Democratic Party. Hence it's pretty easy for them to overlook the issues. This is why they lost, even to a deeply flawed, corrupt candidate like Trump.

[supplied_demand]

== put them up in hotels until their claims of asylum are adjudicated, which takes years. How is that not open borders==

You answered right before asking, their asylum claim must be adjudicated. If it is denied, what happens?

== Because that's how it sounds if you're not willing to actually deport anyone.==

We do and have always deported plenty of people. Obama (1st term) and Biden both deported more people than Trump did in his first term.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/22/us/trump-biden-immigrants...

== we'd be better off with 0 immigrants and 0 crimes==

Thanks for saying this, it lets us know where you stand regardless of the facts shared.

[xp84]

> You answered right before asking, their asylum claim must be adjudicated. If it is denied, what happens?

I just gave an illustration of what happens. In the UK, the ECHR forces them to let the criminals stay anyway. In the US, many just don't show up for their hearings and there's nothing anybody can do about that. And even if they only stay those 4 years, having a constant 4 year revolving door backlog of supposed "asylum seekers" means there is always a ton of people here to compete for either jobs or government benefits (especially in blue states, where they would think it immoral not to include them in healthcare and other expensive welfare).

> Obama (1st term) and Biden both deported more people than Trump did

Pretty sure that's mainly because of a change to count someone turned immediately away at the border as a "deportation" rather than as nothing, as it was before. Obama didn't have lower net immigration than his predecessor, just higher deportations on paper.

> it lets us know where you stand

I don't think any benefits of unselective immigration and the outright asylum fraud outweigh the costs, no. Those costs are overwhelmingly borne by the poorest Americans (including many legal immigrants), and I prioritize their interests above that of immigrants who don't follow the rules. shrug

[skissane]

Part of steelmanning / reading charitably is trying to put aside overly emotive/rhetorical/alarmist presentations of an idea and just concentrate on the facts of the matter.

Suppose that Madeupistan is a wealthy developed country with a population of 1 million. Over the next decade, its government has decided to admit 100,000 immigrants. It is evaluating two plans for doing:

Plan A: Admit 100,000 university-educated professionals with established careers and no criminal records

Plan B: Admit 100,000 people at random from all who apply, with no restrictions on who can apply

At the end of the decade, will the people of Madeupistan be happier under plan A or plan B? Almost surely the answer is A: plan B will admit a lot more socially disadvantaged people, worsening crime rates, poverty, social cohesion, violent extremism, etc, compared to A

Now, plans A and B are “ideal types” which don’t correspond to any real world immigration policy - really they represent extremes on a continuum of immigration selectivity, with A being a super-selective immigration policy and B being super-unselective

In the real world, Australia is significantly closer to A and further away from B than France is; and, unsurprisingly, France has significantly greater immigration-related social problems than Australia has.

And the real tragedy of it, is people end up blaming immigration and immigrants in general, when many of the problems they complain about are not inherent to immigration in itself, just to the mismanagement of it by many (but not all) Western nations

The question then is, do the people who “hold a fundamentally different view” agree or disagree with this argument about mismanagement of migration flows - and if they disagree, what is their counterargument to it?

[supplied_demand]

== In the real world, Australia is significantly closer to A and further away from B than France is; and, unsurprisingly, France has significantly greater immigration-related social problems than Australia has.==

Your example completely ignores the facts of history and geography in favor of simplicity and a narrative.

Australia is a former colony, France is a former colonizer. Australia is an island, France is a small part of a much larger continent. Density is considerably higher in France than Australia.

There is a large immigration blowback happening in Australia today, even with your ideal policies.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-27/have-the-political-wi...

[skissane]

> Australia is a former colony, France is a former colonizer

Australia is a "former colonizer" too – the UK transferred the colony of British New Guinea to Australia in 1902; in 1914, Australian troops conquered the colony of German New Guinea to the north; the two thereafter were ruled by Australia until it granted them independence as Papua New Guinea (PNG) in 1975.

One of the major reasons for the British declaring a protectorate over southeastern New Guinea in 1884, and annexing it in 1888, was the British colony of Queensland (now an Australian state) attempted to annex it in 1883 – London opposed that, and declared the annexation attempt unlawful, but felt the best way to respond to Australian demands for colonial expansion to the north was to make the territory a separate British protectorate/colony. In order to convince London to go ahead with the annexation, the Australian colonies had to promise to financially support British New Guinea.

Despite PNG being a former Australian colony, Australia does not give any special immigration preference to people from PNG; so if France has given such preference to people from its former colonies in the past, I think that was a choice France made, not something it was required to do.

> Australia is an island, France is a small part of a much larger continent.

It is true that being an island makes it easier for Australia to have a "hardline" immigration policy, but there are a lot of aspects of Australian immigration policy which could be copied by non-island European nations, except they decide not to – e.g. rebalancing the immigration intake to put more emphasis on skilled immigration and education visas, and less on family reunion or humanitarian/refugee flows; mandatory detention of unauthorised arrivals, including overseas processing; the UK government's controversial Rwanda asylum plan (abandoned by the new Labour government) was in part inspired by Australia's policies.

> Density is considerably higher in France than Australia.

Yes, but what has that got to do with selectivity of immigration policy? Also, population density figures for Australia are somewhat misleading, in that they include massive areas of the country which are borderline uninhabitable; if you restrict yourself to the parts of the country where the vast majority of people live, the density figures are a lot higher, although still lower than much of Europe.

> There is a large immigration blowback happening in Australia today, even with your ideal policies.

Yes, there's an ongoing debate about Australia's immigration levels, but the debate is very different in character from that found in much of Europe. Hard right parties such as Rassemblement national and Alternative für Deutschland both did very well in their respective countries recent national elections, even if RN didn't perform quite as well as many observers had expected – and "immigration blowback" was a big factor in driving that. By contrast, the hard right in Australia (such as Pauline Hanson's One Nation) is in disarray, it had much more success 20–25 years ago, the national government is centre-left and the mainstream centre-right seems to have lost its feet, at least on the national level.

And I wouldn't call Australia's policies "ideal" – very likely there are some areas of immigration policy in which Australia could do better – it is just that on the whole I think it has been more successful than those of many European nations, or that of the US.